Infinite State

…is they break if you hit them hard enough.

I think it is required, given my previous posts on all the benefits of cycling, to disclose that a few days ago I went out on a snowy morning when I probably shouldn’t have  and broke my collarbone in two places. While this has provided lots of entertaining stories, it certainly raises some tough questions about something that I love to do.  I’m scheduled for surgery on Wednesday to have the bone repaired and a metal plate inserted. I’m encouraged that apparently Lance Armstrong is wearing one too, but I suspect that his is some advanced carbon fiber molybdenum composite…

For the past few years, I’ve had a slow-burning desire to own less. Certainly in the physical sense, I keep looking around me at the contents of bookshelves, boxes of papers, odds and ends and jars of spices I haven’t opened in a year. I am just not going to use that star anise. How about that bag of dried lotus roots Jonah brought back from Thailand sometime in the 90’s? Yikes. At one point, I even woke up in the night, scrawled some notes on a piece of paper and fell back asleep. In the morning I found:

• Get rid of 30% of everything
• If something hasn’t been used in 12 months, dump it
• If you find something that you weren’t able to locate when you needed it, dump it

I’ve had some success trying to act on these. My friend Geoff sent me this link to Paul Graham’s interesting essay on this topic. So I’ve started using Craigslist to unload things of value (guitar amplifier, color printer, etc.) and took at look at Freecycle but haven’t waded into it yet. I took a great Gibson ES335 down to be sold on consignment because I just never play it anymore. I’ve been giving things to my kids that I was holding onto for years, which they totally love and I won’t miss. It’s just hard to throw things out when they seem like they still have value to someone, somewhere. Anyone want a Sony Handycam from a few years back?

Our long distance bills are typically pretty small, but every so often a long call to an old friend results in a surprising phone bill. After years of trusting Working Assets Long Distance to be reasonable (and contribute to good causes) my growing suspicions were too great to ignore. Turns out we were in fact paying around $0.22 a minute long distance on some calls. So I did a little research and switched to a solid plan from a major provider for 25% of that on most calls. And what do we get in the mail from Working Assets? A desperate letter asking us to come back and get $0.05 per minute 24/7, a $50. credit and a year’s worth of Ben & Jerry’s certificates. All I could think was they’d been fleecing us all that time.

So if you are a WALD customer, I suggest you switch away just so they lower your rates and send you free ice cream.

After over 20 years at the keyboard I’ve hit a major roadblock that’s stopping me in my tracks. Last week I was diagnosed with carpal tunnel in both wrists and tendonitis in several places. It’s not clear how serious or long-term a problem this presents, but I must cut down my typing immediately, so posts will be fewer for awhile.

As I study this, and try out a variety of new input devices, I am also wondering about what’s been different in the past month that could have contributed to the developing pain and soreness. Ergonomics and different software that drove up mouse usage are the prime suspects so far.

Ah, Defender.

My friend Josh Seiden has started a blog just about that old Williams video game. 1981 in the city all over again.

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It may be that I finally recognize who my peers are, or it may be that age makes me value them. Either way, sitting down to a slow meal of conversation and laughter with people you respect and enjoy seems increasingly important in life. I wonder if I just came to this realization late?

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